CTE PERKINS/ACCELEGRANTS INSTRUCTION MANUAL

RIDE Career & Technical Education Programs

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Introduction

The Rhode Island Department of Education will utilize the online e-grants system called

AcceleGrants to facilitate the submission and processing of the Carl D. Perkins Grant Application

for Career and Technical Education. The purpose of this transition from a paper submission and

review to an online one is to establish, improve and maintain high quality and efficiency in this

process. The RIDE CTE Perkins funding grant will join other federal grants awarded to Rhode

Island and processed within the AcceleGrants system. The goal of the electronic submission,

review and approval process is to promote program review quality and continuous

improvement.

This guide to the Perkins AcceleGrants is intended to guide the online application process.

Overview of the AcceleGrants Process

The RIDE/CTE Perkins AcceleGrants process is comprised of completion of a RIDE-developed

AcceleGrants-based application based on Section 134 of the Carl D. Perkins federal funding

legislation, the review of the CTE program of study, budget sheets, Assurances, Certifications , RI

Final Agreed Upon Performance Levels (FAUPL), and completed (LEA authorizing) signature

sheets downloaded online.

CTE career preparation programs, initiatives, and planning activities must include a budget and

budget narrative detailing how the CTE program funds will be budgeted to achieve the desired

goals as described in the Comprehensive Local Needs Assessment (Needs Assessment). All

funding applications must also indicate the milestones that will be use to track progress toward

continuous improvement.

This application picks up where the Needs Assessment left off. How funds are budgeted for the

2020-2021 program year should reflect year 1 expenditures of the two-year Theory of Action

described in Section 6 of the Needs Assessment.

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TABLE OF CONTENTS

General Information………………………………………………………………………………………………….. 4

Accessing the AcceleGrants System………………………………………………………………… 4

Step 1. Logging In………………………………………………………………………………… 4

Step 2. Perkins Funding Applications…………………………………………………… 5

Step 3. Accessing your CTE Program of Study……………………………………… 6

Step 4. Specific CTE Programs of Study……………………………………………… 6

Step 5. Funding Application Homepage ……………………..……………………………….. 7

Step 6. Accessing Program Funding Application …………………………………………. 8

Step 7. Accessing Budget of the Funding Application………………………………….…. 9

Budgets

o Budget Screens on AcceleGrants……………………………………………… 9

o Budget Grids…………………………………………………………………………… 11

o Budget Summary…………………………………………………………………… 11

Step 8. Before Completing Your Perkins Funding Application ……………………… 12

o Program Applicant Information …………………………………………… 12

o Important Documents …………………………………………………………. 13

Step 9: Completing the Needs Assessment & Progress Monitoring Application 14

Step 10: Completing the Perkins Application Narratives……………………………… 15

Step 11: Completing the Categorical Budgets ……………………………………………. 17

Step 12: Accelegrants Tools & Functions …………………………………………………… 18

o Saving Data…………………………………………………………………………. 18 o Validating Data…………………………………………………………………… 18 o Working with Another Person ……………………………………………. 19 o Printing………………………………………………………………………………. 19 o Roles and Responsibilities………………………………………………….. 19

o Workflow………………………………………………………………………….. 20 o Tracking Application History…………………………………………….. 21

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o Address Book Contacts ……………………………………………………………… 23 o Related Documents……………………………………………………………… 24 o Document Library……………………………….………………………………. 25

Appendices

Appendix A -AcceleGrants Sequence Keys…………………………………………… 25

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GENERAL INFORMATION The purpose of this document is to provide an overview of the functionality of the AcceleGrants

system. This overview will assist LEA users in filling out the funding applications as part of their

Perkins Grant application process.

Accessing the Site

o You can access the AcceleGrants site by opening your web browser and entering

the address http://gms.ride.ri.gov. The login screen will be displayed.

STEP 1. LOGGING IN

Enter your username and password in the spaces provided. Your username will be your first

initial and your last name. Upon your first access to the site you will be asked to create your own

password. Once the system verifies your credentials, you will be taken to the home page, which

shows you any announcements or reminders that RIDE wants to communicate.

PLEASE FILL OUT ONLY THOSE AREAS WHICH ARE REQUIRED FOR YOUR PARTICULAR TYPE OF CTE

PROGRAM. PLEASE NOTE THAT ALL THE NECESSARY QUESTIONS UNIQUE TO YOUR TYPE OF

PROGRAM MUST BE ANSWERED WITHIN THE ACCELEGRANTS ONLINE APPLICATION BEFORE IT CAN

BE COMPLETELY REVIEWED AND PROCESSED FOR APPROVAL.

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STEP 2. FUNDING APPLICATIONS

From here, you can access funding applications by clicking the Search link in the navigation bar

Accessing Funding Applications

The Funding Applications page lets you view the various funding applications that are stored in

the system.

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STEP 3. ACCESSING YOUR PROGRAM

Enter the name or the first letter of the name of the district to be searched. For example, to

search “Providence,” type “p” in the Name field and then click the “Search” button located

below the name of the program.

STEP 4. SPECIFIC PROGRAMS

Click on the specific district name that you want to work on from the screen above. Click on the $

sign on the right side of the screen to access your program information.

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STEP 5. FUNDING APPLICATIONS HOMEPAGE

The first thing you should do is select the fiscal year for the application you want to access. In

this case, you should select 2021.

You will notice several applications that are available for submission: o Career Technical Education – Secondary

o Career Technical Education – Categorical o Career Technical Education – Postsecondary o Career Technical Education – Special Programs (DCYF and Department of Labor ONLY)

Click the “Career Technical Education Secondary” link to access the Funding Application Sections

for your specific programs.

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STEP 6. ACCESSING PROGRAM FUNDING APPLICATIONS

Click on the “District Level” heading, and from a drop-down menu, you will be able to select the

specific program you would like to work with.

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From this same drop-down menu, you will also see the option to “Add Program,” which enables

you to add a new program to the system.

STEP 7. ACCESSING SECTIONS OF THE FUNDING APPLICATION

Click on Budget and you will be brought to the next page where you will see the budget screen.

This screen allows you to work on your budget.

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The screen below represents one of the Object Codes that specifies each section of the budget.

This screen allows you to work on the applicable sections of your budget that is specific to the

program’s expenditure needs. Click on Return to Screen to access other sections of the budget.

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When finished with your budget click on Save and Go To> Next Page, at the top of the screen

Budget Screens: Included below are various budget screens that will assist you in completing

your budget.

Budget Grid

Budget Summary

Don’t forget to regularly update & save your work in the AcceleGrants

system!

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STEP 8. BEFORE COMPLETING THE FUNDING APPLICATION

Program Applicant Information: Prior to completing the Funding Application, complete the

“Program Applicant Information” page (circled below).

Complete the Program Applicant Information page. Click the drop-down menu (circled below) to

complete relevant contact information according to “contact person type.”

After completing the Program Applicant Information page, Click on Save and Go To> Next Page

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Important Documents: The Important Documents section includes federal documents that must be read and signed and a hard copy returned to RIDE. This indicates that your district representative has read and understands these documents, as evidenced by his/her signature. Please mail these documents to the following address:

Rhode Island Department of Education (Attn. Perkins V)

255 Westminster Street

Providence, RI 02903

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STEP 9. COMPLETING THE NEEDS ASSESSMENT/PROGRESS MONITORING APPLICATION

Every LEA will need to complete ONE Needs Assessment & Progress Monitoring for the entire application. To access this, return to the district Funding Application homepage and click on “Career Technical Education – Secondary.”

To complete the Needs Assessment & Progress Monitoring application, click the link below.

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Populate this portion of the application with the SMART goals created from your RIDE-approved

CLNA (Section A). After this is complete, identify 3-5 metrics that will be used to monitor

progress throughout the year (Section B). When finished, click Save >Next Page.

STEP 10. COMPLETING THE APPLICATION’S NARRATIVE SECTION

After selecting the specific program that you would like to work with from the drop-down menu, click on “Application” to fill out the Perkins Application information for your particular CTE program.

Don’t forget to regularly update & save your work in the AcceleGrants

system!

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You should read each set of instructions for each box and answer accordingly, based on how

your CTE program meets the Perkins requirements. There are 6 questions in this section. At the

end, scroll back to the beginning of this form and click on Save and Go to Next Page. This will be

the section for you to provide your Program of Study.

Don’t forget to regularly update & save your work in the AcceleGrants

system!

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STEP 11. COMPLETING THE CATEGORICAL BUDGETS

The Career & Technical Education Board of Trustees (CTEBOT) determined that a reporting procedure is

necessary to learn how the CTE Categorical dollars are invested on an annual basis. Effective for the 2020

CTE Categorical distribution cycle, and beyond, RIDE is requiring that all CTE Categorical funds recipients

develop a budget that details how the 2020 CTE Categorical dollars are invested.

Return to the district Funding Application homepage and click on “Career Technical Education –

Secondary.”

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Step 12: ACCELEGRANTS TOOLS & FUNCTIONS

Saving Data

Each funding application page has a Go to> save and navigate button at the top of the page. By

moving the mouse pointer into this area, the system will display all possible application pages to

navigate to. Clicking on one of the dropped down options, the system will save any changes

made to the current page and navigate the user to the area selected. It is very important to save

the data by clicking on this button. Clicking a link in the navigation area at the top of the page will

navigate away from the page without saving your data.

After you login to AcceleGrants, the system keeps track of who you are and which LEA you

represent as you move throughout the application. AcceleGrants will keep track of this

information until you click the Logout link in the top right corner of the page, or until the system

detects that you have not been actively working on the site for a period of one hour. User and

district information are shown in the top right corner of the application.

Validating Data

Several pages have basic data validation built into them. In these cases, users are alerted that

they have entered invalid data when they click the save button. AcceleGrants also performs

more complex validations behind the scenes. Examples of these validations include making sure

a value entered on a page is consistent with a value entered on a different page, or ensuring that

districts enter data if that data is only required for specific districts and types of CTE programs.

The messages for these validations are accessible through the Funding Application Sections

page. Holding your mouse over the icon in the messages column causes text to appear which

will indicate whether or not your application is valid in its current state. Clicking this icon re-

validates the data and takes you to a page that displays any validation messages that may exist

for your application and provides a link to the page that needs to be corrected.

A countdown clock displaying the time remaining in the hour

is in a floating panel which will remain visible as you scroll

down on the lengthier pages, such as the Application Details

pages. Each time you click a link to navigate to another page,

or click a button to save your work, this clock is reset and you

have another full hour before AcceleGrants stops tracking

your user and district information.

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Validation messages are also available on a page-by-page basis. Pages have a “View messages”

link that, when clicked, will run the validation logic against the data for that page. If any errors or

warnings are found, they will be displayed on the page.

Working with another Person

Accelegrants allows multiple people to work on a funding application at the same time.

However, in order to work avoid a situation where users accidentally overwrite each other’s

changes, the system will not allow two individuals to work on the same page for the same district

simultaneously. For example, if a user named “Person One” is working on a page when “User

Two’ attempts to access that page, “Person Two” will see a message stating, “This page is

currently being edited by Person One.” Person Two will not be able to edit any of the

information on the page. When Person One has navigated away from the page, Person Two can

refresh the page using the browser’s Refresh button. When they do, the message will not be

there. Person One’s most recent changes will be visible, and Person Two will have the ability to

edit the information on the page.

Printing

Because of their layout and the amount of data they contain, many pages in AcceleGrants will

not print properly using the built-in print functionality of your web browser. However,

AcceleGrants can generate .pdf files which are suitable for printing. In order to view these files,

you need a recent version of Adobe Acrobat Reader on your PC. You can get this by visiting

www.adobe.com and downloading the free Acrobat Reader software.

To print a funding application, navigate to the Funding Applications Sections page. You can see

images representing a printer down the right-most column on the page. You may choose to

print all of the pages from a particular grant.

To print a grant, click the printer icon located next to the grant in which you are interested. This

image shows the printer icon for the application.

To print the entire CTE application, click the printer icon located at the bottom of the screen

across from the work “All”.

Roles

AcceleGrants uses role-based security. This means that all system users are assigned to at least

one role, and these roles determine what that user is able to do within the application. There

are four main roles to which a district user may be assigned:

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1. Career Technical Education – All Program and Financial Input. Members of this role are

the primary providers of funding application data. They have the ability to edit the

application.

2. Career Technical Education – Secondary Program and Financial Input. Members of this

role are restricted to input of the Secondary funding application data only. This role has

the ability to edit the secondary CTE application only.

3. District Career Technical Education – Coordinator. This role is responsible for the review

and initial approval of all CTE programs within the application.

4. District Business Manager. This role must approve the application after the CTE

Coordinator has indicated their approval.

5. District Superintendent. The Superintendent role must approve the application before it

can be submitted to RIDE for processing.

6. District Administrator. The person in this role is responsible for setting up the user

accounts for everyone in their district who needs to access AcceleGrants.

Workflow Steps

Funding applications are subject to a set of approval steps, before they can be submitted to RIDE

for final approval. This set of steps, called a workflow, govern whether or not an application is

editable at a given point in time as well as determining the next approval step.

The funding application will typically be in one of the following five statuses while being worked

on by the district:

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1. Not Started. This is the default status of an application when nobody has started to fill it

out. At this stage, the application cannot be edited. Members of the Program and

Financial Input role can change the status to Draft Started.

2. Draft Started. This is the status where the vast majority of the information will be

entered into the application. Anybody in the Program and Financial Input role can edit

the application when it has a status of Draft Started.

3. Draft Completed. Once all of the Program and Financial Input people have completed the

funding application, someone from that role can change the status to Draft Completed.

This signifies that the data entry is complete and the application cannot be edited when it

has a status of Draft Completed.

4. Ready for CTE Program Coordinator Approval. Someone in the CTE Program Coordinator

role will review the application once it has the status of Draft Completed. If they have

approved the application, they can set the status to Business Manager Approved. The

application cannot be edited in this status.

5. Ready for Business Manger Approval. The Business Manager will review the application

once it has the status of District CTE Coordinator Approved. If they are ready to approve

the application, they can change the status to Business Manager Approved. The

application cannot be edited in this status.

6. Ready for District Superintendent Approval. As a final step within the district, the

Superintendent has the opportunity to indicate his or her approval of the application. To

approve the application and submit it to RIDE, the Superintendent changes the

application status to Superintendent Approved. The application cannot be edited in this

status.

Approval can also be withheld by the CTE Program Coordinator, District Business Manager or

District Superintendent.

In these cases, the application can have statuses of CTE Program Coordinator not Approved,

District Business Manager Not Approved or District Superintendent Not Approved, respectively.

If a funding application has one of these statuses, it behaves as if it had a status of Draft Started.

This is, members of the Program and Financial Input role can edit the application and change the

status to Draft Complete. From this point, the application follows the workflow of steps outlined

above, starting with step 3.

In order to change the status of a funding application, a user in the appropriate role must click

the link displaying the desired status to the top of the Funding Application Sections page. Click

the “Draft Started” link to set the application status to Draft Started.

Tracking History and Recording Comments

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AcceleGrants keeps track of the history of your funding application. At any point, you can review

the log to find out when the application changed status and who was responsible for the status

change. To do so, click the View Status/Comments History Log link at the top of the Funding

Application Sections page.

This displays the Status/Comments History Log page.

In this example, there are two types of comments displayed in the grid. Status change

comments are inserted automatically by the system when the funding application changes

status, for example, from Not Started to Draft Started.

User-entered comments may be entered as well. To enter a comment, click the Create a new

Comment link at the top of the page. This navigates to the Create Comment screen, as shown

below:

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To create a comment that will appear in the Status/Comments History Log, enter text in the

Comment field and click the Create button. Your text will be created as a comment in the log.

Optionally, the application can email the comment to other application users. To take advantage

of this feature, before clicking the Create button, select the type of contact you would like to

email from the Send Email to? Drop down-down and click the Add button. The system will show

you which contacts you have selected. In the picture below, the comment will be emailed to

everyone in the District Superintendent and District Business Manager roles for the district of the

user who is filling out the form. Once you’ve selected the desired recipients, click the Create

button and the comment is logged and the email messages are sent

Address Book Contacts

If you click the Address Book link in the left Navigation bar, you will be taken to the AcceleGrants

contact list. At the top of the page, you will see a table which lists the various contact types

within your district.

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The first four contact types match the names of roles available in your district. You do not have

to do anything special to supply the contacts for these contact types. Simply adding an individual

to a role will automatically add them to the list of contacts for the corresponding contact type.

When the District Administrator wants to add someone to work on the application from the

Business Manager’s office s/he will simply add that name to the Business Manager role.

You must have at least one person designated as a contact for each contact type in order to

submit your funding application. Below the district contact list, there is another table listing the

contacts with RIDE, broken down where applicable, clicking on an individual’s name will navigate

to a page that provides contact information for the individual.

Related Documents

Each funding sections contains a related documents page. This page is divided into two sections:

Agency Recommended Documents and Other Documents.

The Agency Recommended Documents section is reserved for documents that RIDE may require

to be uploaded into the application as part of the LEA’s application submission. Those

documents marked as required must be uploaded by all LEA’s into the designated area. Named

documents but not marked as required are only required by some districts and each LEA must

determine if the recommended document applies to their distric

The Other Documents section can be used to place any document(s) relative to a specific

program including narrative responses to application questions that have exceeded the 5,000-

character limit.

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Document Library

The Document Library contains Agency (RIDE) documents within a number of named folders. The

Agency (RIDE) document section contains numerous application forms, instructions,

spreadsheets, tips, and guidance documents, as well as internet links to useful federal resource

pages.

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